Insomnes
by Lizzosaurus
Summary: Late 20th century USSR; Latvia can't sleep.


Disclaimer.

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Latvia was an insomniac.

He would spend hours staring at the bland grey walls of our shared bedroom. Precious hours he could not afford to lose. He was fortunate to be given the chance to sleep at all. I was often forced to toil away for days on end. I fell asleep at the kitchen counter, or in the shower, or on the floor, almost as often as I fell asleep in my own bed.

But I would push away my bitter jealousy when he slipped under the covers of my small cot. Normally, I suppose it would be near impossible to fit both of us on that flimsy piece of furniture, but we were both so thin…

He would always curl his frail little arms around my torso, pressing himself tightly against me, burrowing his face into my nightshirt.

Sometimes he would ask me to read to him, and sometimes I would comply. But this required turning on the bedside lamp, and we could not neglect Estonia, who also shared the room with us. He did not like being awoken.

We also could not neglect the strict curfew. Turning on a light at such an ungodly hour was rather dangerous.

Most times, he simply lay there, weeping horribly. Or worse, he would silently stare up at me with hollow, glazed eyes.

How it hurt to see the child altered this way.

I would gently tuck his head into the hollow of my neck, unable to bear the sight of such a lifeless creature. I would stroke his hair, watching it curl around my fingers in honeyed ringlets. I would whisper sweet nothings into his ear, and on rare occasion, he would grin at my poorly accented Latvian.

The trembling and shivering and shaking never stopped. No matter how hard I rubbed his spine or how many times I reassured him that no one was there to hurt him, he still shook.

I would let him hold the crucifix that always hung about my neck, and he would run his thin fingers over Jesus' face, his arms, his feet. The thing was so old. A token from Poland, over three centuries ago. Rubbed nearly smooth, it was silver and tarnished and so, so precious.

He would make me tell stories about the Commonwealth.

Those hurt the most. Feliks had stolen my capitol, and I had destroyed his. The past decades had wrought nothing but pain and destruction between us.

Even so, it was not hard to become lost in a world of warmth, and sunshine, and riding horseback through lush fields until the Great Baltic drew forth her looming barricade. A world of fishing, and harvesting, and little children who tangled themselves in between our legs. Hiding in the belfries of monasteries, drinking until we were senseless fools, throwing wineskins at unsuspecting nobles...

These were the stories that enchanted Latvia, and made his dull eyes glint with the faintest spark of mischief.

"Can we do that to Estonia?"

"No."

And for once, he would look like the young boy he was supposed to be. His face would regain the colour it once held.

I was so very tired. I was so exhausted. But I knew he wanted me to stay awake just a little bit longer.

He had told me so.

He would begin to speak of nonsense things that could only entertain half-grown boys. The flattened toad he found in the road a few weeks ago. The girl who swept the greengrocer's vending cart, and braided the most _beautiful_ wildflowers into her hair. The rock he found while tending the gardens that was shaped like Finland's thumb.

"How do you know it looks like Finland's thumb?"

"I just do."

It was quite nice, really. He would bring his own threadbare blankets with him, piling them on top of mine. There was plenty of warmth to be pooled between the two of us. Even with Latvia's shivering. Even in the heart of the Siberian winter, when ice crawled along the floorboards and the bed frames and the tiny windowpane.

"Aren't you tired?" I would murmur, as my eyes began to close without permission. I would brush my fingers over his eyes too, but they just fluttered open again.

"You can sleep now, Toris."

"Hmm." I smiled then, at the way he turned up his nose and spoke like a spoilt king. In a world where Marxism had tightened around our throats like a thick rope, it was a great delight to control something, anything. Apparently that was me. But it was just as well.

Latvia was a fine young king.

Sleep would grip my limbs as soon as my eyes slid shut, plunging me into a land of dark, dreamless oblivion. I knew that Latvia would continue to stir in my arms long after I fell still. He would trace my jawline with a delicate brush of his fingertips, touching the stubble beginning to take residence there. He would trace my eyebrows, my cheekbones, the bridge of my nose.

Most times I was asleep when he did this. Sometimes I was still within a hairsbreadth of consciousness. I did not tell him about it, for it seemed to be one of his deep, secret things.

And he was not granted much of those.

I did not know when he would follow suit and finally close those weary eyes, but when I stirred myself to wakefulness in the small hours of the morning, before the sun began to creep towards the horizon, he was always asleep.

Dead to the world.

So serene was he in his slumber that I quite sorely regretted untangling his wiry limbs from my own and stumbling off the cot, to dress myself and draw the curtains and gather the linens and begin cooking breakfast before any of the members of the household awoke.

Turning to tuck both of our quilts about Latvia's chin, I would watch with a fleeting gaze as he shifted, sighed, and stilled once more.

And for a brief moment, Raivis would stop trembling.

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Hack-job fanfictions with no particular motives or themes are fun. :)

Marxism was the twisted lovechild of Vladimir Lenin and Karl Marx's economic and sociopolitical theories, in which it is believed that the transition from capitalism to socialism is an inevitable part of the development of human society.  
Based on the information I have gathered, Marxism, along with Bolshevism, was the base of the U.S.S.R.'s unshakable political standing as a communist nation.


End file.
